Business - BusinessWeek

Seven hundred billion dollars. That's a ballpark estimate of how much money is wasted in the U.S. medical system every single year, according to a new Thomson Reuters report. A sum equal to roughly one-third of the nation's total health-care spending is flushed away on unnecessary treatments, redundant tests, fraud, errors, and myriad other monetary sinkholes that do nothing to improve the nation's health. Cut that figure by half, and there would be more than enough money to offer top-notch care to every one of America's 46 million uninsured. Full Story »

The news about U.S. commercial real estate is grim ("Deep Trouble," Nov. 16, 2009). But distress can lead to opportunity. Michael Winer, manager of Third Avenue Real Estate Value Fund (NASDAQ:TAREX - News) since its 1998 inception, has proved particularly adept at navigating chaotic environments and profiting from messy restructurings or bankruptcies. Associate Editor Amy Feldman spoke with Winer about strategies for capitalizing on battered real estate. Full Story »

New York entrepreneur Charles B. Wang, who made his mark in software, is busy reinventing himself as a real estate tycoon. He's pushing a mammoth $3.8 billion mixed-use development in suburban Hempstead, Long Island, surrounding the Nassau Coliseum, where his New York Islanders hockey team plays. Full Story »

When insurer AIA moved back into its gray stone colonial headquarters on Shanghai's waterfront Bund in 1998, it marked the return of foreign insurance companies to China after their ejection nearly five decades earlier. Since then the floodgates have opened as Cigna , AXA , Allianz (Toronto:AZ.TO - News), and dozens more have set up shop on the mainland, aiming to tap a market of 1.3 billion people with few options for life insurance. Full Story »